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Friday, November 11, 2016

On Tuesday, Republican Donald Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election. Republicans also kept control of both houses of Congress. Trump is to take the presidential oath in January.

Trump won at least 290 electoral votes, while Clinton won 228, according to the AP (Associated Press) — 270 were required vote to win the election — though Clinton won more national popular votes, 47.7% compared to Trump’s 47.4%. Trump won the crucial electoral votes of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The electors of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had not supported a Republican presidential nominee for more than a quarter century, but in this election between them they provided Trump 30 electoral votes.

According to law, the citizens vote for an elector in the state who promises to vote for a particular candidate. In most states, the candidate who wins most votes in a state wins all electors of the state. Different states have varying numbers of electors, which depend on the state’s population. Since there are 538 electors in the US, one needs to win an absolute majority of the electors, that is, at least 270. Due to the electoral college, a candidate can win the presidential election even if he/she receives lesser national popular vote.

In her concession speech on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton said, “We owe him [Donald Trump] an open mind and a chance to lead.” Clinton also said, “We’ve spent a year and a half, bringing together millions of people from every corner of our country to say with one voice that We believe that the American Dream is big enough for everyone, for people of all races and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people, and people with disabilities; for everyone.”

President Barack Obama had called Trump “uniquely unqualified” during the election campaign, but, after the president-elect victory of Trump, Obama met him in the White House yesterday and said, “My number one priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful.” After the meeting, Trump tweeted, “A fantastic day in D.C. Met with President Obama for first time. Really good meeting, great chemistry. Melania liked Mrs. O [Michelle Obama] a lot!”

Following the unexpected result of the election, people protested in various US cities, often chanting “Not my president”. On Wednesday, more than 60 people were arrested in New York, and a crowd blocked the entrance of Chicago’s Trump Tower. Lily Morton, a 17-year-old student protester, said yesterday, “This generation deserves better than Donald Trump […] The queer people, colored people, women, girls, everyone that is going to be affected by this, we need to protest to help them. There is still love in this country.”

During the voting, huge traffic on the Canadian immigration website resulted in a site crash, officials said. Justin Trudeau tweeted, “I’ve just spoken with President-elect Trump – and we agreed to meet soon to keep building the Canada-US relationship.” ^{((fr))French language: ?Je viens de parler au président élu Trump; nous avons convenu de nous rencontrer bientôt pour continuer à bâtir la relation Canada-É. U.}

Last year, after the Paris attack in November, Trump commented on [[Muslims saying, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” He also said, “our country can not be the victim of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad.” But after winning the president-elect, the statement on Trump’s website was removed, and it redirected to the donation page.

Trump partisans defended Trump saying those proposed actions were to insure safety rather than targeting any religion. Though the statement disappeared from the web site, various defences of it are still there.

Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto congratulated Donald Trump and tweeted, “I congratulate the US on its electoral process and reiterate to @realDonaldTrump [Donald Trump] our willingness to work together for our bilateral relationship.” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Felicito a EUA por su proceso electoral y le reitero a @realDonaldTrump [Donald Trump] la disposición de trabajar juntos en favor de la relación bilateral.}. Mexican currency, the peso, dropped 13% in value as Trump won. Trump had proposed to abandon the trilateral US–Mexico–Canada NAFTA agreement (North American Free Trade Agreement) and to build a wall at the US–Mexico border. Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Mexico would not pay for this wall.

Previously in 2016, Mexico reinforced the peso three times by increasing its benchmark interest rate.

70-year-old Donald Trump will be the oldest US president to first enter the office. No woman has ever been the US president.

Friday, October 6, 2006

Up to 17,000 people are being evacuated in Apex, North Carolina after a chlorine gas leak occurred during a Hazardous Waste facility explosion and fire.

Residents are advised to keep windows closed, turn off all air conditioning and that tenderness of the mouth, gagging and nausea are typical signs of poisoning. They are advised to stay away from the fire and any smoke, as it could be a health hazard. CNN reports that air quality tests run by the NCDENR indicate nothing especially harmful in the air near the plant.

Area residents are being advised to call 919-856-7044 for general information as 911 lines are overloaded. Bruce Radford, manager of the town in suburban Raleigh, said that the business district, schools and the town hall will remain closed on Friday.

No fatalities have been reported. WRAL-TV reported that 90 residents of a nearby nursing care facility were moved to a local hospital as a precautionary measure. About 20 Apex residents were reported to have been treated and released for respiratory symptoms related to exposure.

Officials are presently unsure of the cause. The fire and subsequent explosions started sometime after 9 p.m. EST Thursday, October 5.

Changing weather conditions in the area threaten additional evacuations. A section of State Highway 55 has been shut down near the incident.

The company, Environmental Quality of Wayne, Michigan, had been warned and fined $32,000 by state regulators in March of 2006 for hazardous conditions at the plant, which temporarily stores hazardous materials including chlorine, pesticides, and PCBs.

WRAL-TV reports that Sulfur, Oxidizers, Chlorine, Pesticides and PCBs were stored in the facility.

Fire crews from Cary, Apex, Raleigh, Wake County and Fairview are assisting in the effort. However, there is no effort to fight the fire as it would be too dangerous to firefighting personnel. It will eventually burn itself out.

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Saturday, October 20, 2007

A Canadian man was arrested in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand Friday and is facing charges of sexual abuse of a child under 15 and illegal detention. He is also suspected of posting about 200 online images of child abuse on the Internet.

According to the BBC, Thai authorities are ordering Neal to stay in custody for 12 days for questioning before the official trial starts. Under Thai law he can be held for up to 84 days before trial.

Thirty-two-year old Christopher Paul Neil, from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

Neal was working in South Korea as an English teacher. He has been working in Vietnam, South Korea, Cambodia, and Thailand since 2000. Neal was recorded on a security camera at Bangkok airport on October 11.

Thai courts have ruled that he will be charged in Thailand. For now it is up to the Canadian and Thailand authorities to discuss.

“But if something took place here, we would want to have the person held accountable here, but that is very premature and it may even be speculative at this stage,” said Wally Oppal, attorney general of British Columbia (B.C.). Neal could be charged in Canada because of a law which allows paedophiles to be charged in Canada even if they didn’t do the crimes in Canada.

The RCMP are investigating to see if Neal has committed any crimes in B.C., which could mean charges will also be laid in Canada.

Interpol, just last week, issued a public search for Neal. A 15-year-old, who was one of Neal’s victims, alerted authorities of the man. On Thursday Thai courts issued an arrest warrant. Authorities had been able to unscramble the face of a man in the 200 online photos, which had been digitally scrambled. The unscrambled images were used to identify the suspect.

Phyakrut News Agency reported that Neil’s feet were trampled on by reporters until they bled. It was also noted that the picture of the man issued by Interpol had a very hairy chest whereas the suspect arrested had a quite hairless chest, the faces also looked remarkably different raising the question as to whether the real “Mr Swirly Lollipop” has in fact been caught. Police Major General Wimon Powintara stated however that Neil is now wanted for having sex with boys and girls and that one victim identified him as the one that lured him from an Internet cafe to play video games in his apartment where he was orally raped before being given 200 Thai Baht compensation (US$6).

Thursday, February 2, 2006

In response to recent accusations that United States government employees have engaged in Wikipedia vandalism and other forms of perceived negative editing of articles, Wikipedia editors have set up a webpage listing all Wikipedia edits made through IP addresses that are allocated to the United States House of Representatives and other United States government agencies. The House IP address was briefly banned from editing Wikipedia articles in the wake of the initial controversy, but the ban was lifted on January 30 after Wikipedia administrators decided that there have been a number of valuable contributions made through the House and Senate IP addresses in addition to the controversial edits.

On January 31 and February 1, however, the U.S. House of Representatives’ common IP address, 143.231.249.141, were banned again for three hours due to vandalism. Because the IP address is shared by House staff members, it is uncertain whether or not the same person(s) responsible for the previous vandalism are also responsible for the latest.

Examples of contributions submitted through the House IP address included removing, “In 2005, he has come under scrutiny for accepting campaign contributions from embattled former house leader Tom Delay,” from the article on Thad McCotter, removing election statistics from the article on Dan Lungren, and, in the article on Marilyn Musgrave, changing the paragraph

“As a state legislator, Musgrave spent much of her time on social issues, particularly authoring bills to deny marriage rights and parental rights for gay and lesbian families. One of her final, failed bills would have made it much more difficult for same-sex parents to see their children in the hospital during an emergency. Musgrave also cast the only vote against legislation to give battered spouses paid leave from work.”

to

“As a state legislator, Musgrave spent much of her time on social issues, particularly authoring bills to protect children and the traditional definition of marriage, as well as gun owner’s rights.”

After the block from Wikipedia expired, the House of Representatives user continued to edit the article on Chris Shays. Chris Shays had co-sponsored a bill with Marty Meehan, whose staffers had previously been found to have been negatively editing Wikipedia entries, The American Civil Liberties Union said of the bill “key elements of Shays-Meehan violate the First Amendment right to free speech because the legislation contains provisions that would violate the constitutionally-protected right of the people to express their opinions about issues through broadcast advertising if they mention the name of a candidate.” All mentions of the bill were removed from the article. Also removed was a paragraph about Chris Shays raising $70,000 with House Speaker Dennis Hastert at a country club event.

Again, the IP address was blocked for an eight-hour period.

Wikipedia edits in Congress are not coming from the House of Representatives alone. An edit from the Senate in July removed references to a plagiarism scandal with Senator Joe Biden, who has informally said he may seek a Democratic nomination for president in 2008. As of February 4, 2006, the edit has not fixed by Wikipedia users.

IP addresses from the CIA, the Department of Justice, the Marines, and the Navy are listed on the site as having made several cases of vandalism. Some examples of vandalism from the Department of Justice IP ranges involve articles on TV and radio shows, a baseball player, or just complaining about their work. In addition to accusations of vandalism, there have also been accusations of government employees introducing perceived bias, political spinning, or misinformation into Wikipedia articles by adding or removing information.

These cases include articles on an Irish politician, and in the George W. Bush article, introducing accusations of Hugo Chavez being a dictator, and removing information covering the George W. Bush substance abuse controversy. In addition, a person using a Department of Justice IP address edited a page covering indicted former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The editor removed two paragraphs stating a judge ruled that Tom DeLay had broken state law by not disclosing over $600,000 of fundraising money, a quote from Tom DeLay in which he stated that it drives the Democrats crazy wondering why the Republican Party institutes pro-Israeli policy, and a subsection on controversies involving DeLay’s relatives. Edits to George W. Bush’s article were done within the span of an hour. Edits to Tom DeLay’s article were made within an hour as well, although followed by a shorter, minor second session of editing later that day.

An editor using a CIA IP address is accused of vandalizing an article on the current president of Iran. Editors using Marine and Navy IP addresses based in Pensacola, Florida are accused of vandalizing an article on a rock song and on former U.S. president Bill Clinton, and accused of adding racist comments to articles on an actor and Martin Luther King, Jr., and adding comments that are perceived to criticize the men and women in the Navy reserves.

The IP addresses of the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the Navy and Marines stationed in Pensacola, Florida were found using the American Registry for Internet Numbers at the official website. Neither the government nor the Wikimedia Foundation have released an official statement.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ IP address is not the first governmental address to have been blocked after accusations of disrupting Wikipedia. The IP address belonging to a subdivision of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development in Alberta, Canada was blocked for three months since late 2005. An IP address belonging to the German Bundestag has been repeatedly blocked from the German Wikipedia after accusations of vandalism, including sexually explicit comments.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Few artists ever penetrate the subconscious level of American culture the way RuPaul Andre Charles did with the 1993 album Supermodel of the World. It was groundbreaking not only because in the midst of the Grunge phenomenon did Charles have a dance hit on MTV, but because he did it as RuPaul, formerly known as Starbooty, a supermodel drag queen with a message: love everyone. A duet with Elton John, an endorsement deal with MAC cosmetics, an eponymous talk show on VH-1 and roles in film propelled RuPaul into the new millennium.

In July, RuPaul’s movie Starrbooty began playing at film festivals and it is set to be released on DVD October 31st. Wikinews reporter David Shankbone recently spoke with RuPaul by telephone in Los Angeles, where she is to appear on stage for DIVAS Simply Singing!, a benefit for HIV-AIDS.

DS: How are you doing?

RP: Everything is great. I just settled into my new hotel room in downtown Los Angeles. I have never stayed downtown, so I wanted to try it out. L.A. is one of those traditional big cities where nobody goes downtown, but they are trying to change that.

DS: How do you like Los Angeles?

RP: I love L.A. I’m from San Diego, and I lived here for six years. It took me four years to fall in love with it and then those last two years I had fallen head over heels in love with it. Where are you from?

DS: Me? I’m from all over. I have lived in 17 cities, six states and three countries.

RP: Where were you when you were 15?

DS: Georgia, in a small town at the bottom of Fulton County called Palmetto.

RP: When I was in Georgia I went to South Fulton Technical School. The last high school I ever went to was…actually, I don’t remember the name of it.

DS: Do you miss Atlanta?

RP: I miss the Atlanta that I lived in. That Atlanta is long gone. It’s like a childhood friend who underwent head to toe plastic surgery and who I don’t recognize anymore. It’s not that I don’t like it; I do like it. It’s just not the Atlanta that I grew up with. It looks different because it went through that boomtown phase and so it has been transient. What made Georgia Georgia to me is gone. The last time I stayed in a hotel there my room was overlooking a construction site, and I realized the building that was torn down was a building that I had seen get built. And it had been torn down to build a new building. It was something you don’t expect to see in your lifetime.

DS: What did that signify to you?

RP: What it showed me is that the mentality in Atlanta is that much of their history means nothing. For so many years they did a good job preserving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a preservationist. It’s just an interesting observation.

DS: In 2004 when you released your third album, Red Hot, it received a good deal of play in the clubs and on dance radio, but very little press coverage. On your blog you discussed how you felt betrayed by the entertainment industry and, in particular, the gay press. What happened?

RP: Well, betrayed might be the wrong word. ‘Betrayed’ alludes to an idea that there was some kind of a promise made to me, and there never was. More so, I was disappointed. I don’t feel like it was a betrayal. Nobody promises anything in show business and you understand that from day one.

But, I don’t know what happened. It seemed I couldn’t get press on my album unless I was willing to play into the role that the mainstream press has assigned to gay people, which is as servants of straight ideals.

DS: Do you mean as court jesters?

RP: Not court jesters, because that also plays into that mentality. We as humans find it easy to categorize people so that we know how to feel comfortable with them; so that we don’t feel threatened. If someone falls outside of that categorization, we feel threatened and we search our psyche to put them into a category that we feel comfortable with. The mainstream media and the gay press find it hard to accept me as…just…

DS: Everything you are?

RP: Everything that I am.

DS: It seems like years ago, and my recollection might be fuzzy, but it seems like I read a mainstream media piece that talked about how you wanted to break out of the RuPaul ‘character’ and be seen as more than just RuPaul.

RP: Well, RuPaul is my real name and that’s who I am and who I have always been. There’s the product RuPaul that I have sold in business. Does the product feel like it’s been put into a box? Could you be more clear? It’s a hard question to answer.

DS: That you wanted to be seen as more than just RuPaul the drag queen, but also for the man and versatile artist that you are.

RP: That’s not on target. What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system. A friend of mine recently did the Oprah show about transgendered youth. It was obvious that we, as a culture, have a hard time trying to understand the difference between a drag queen, transsexual, and a transgender, yet we find it very easy to know the difference between the American baseball league and the National baseball league, when they are both so similar. We’ll learn the difference to that. One of my hobbies is to research and go underneath ideas to discover why certain ones stay in place while others do not. Like Adam and Eve, which is a flimsy fairytale story, yet it is something that people believe; what, exactly, keeps it in place?

DS: What keeps people from knowing the difference between what is real and important, and what is not?

RP: Our belief systems. If you are a Christian then your belief system doesn’t allow for transgender or any of those things, and you then are going to have a vested interest in not understanding that. Why? Because if one peg in your belief system doesn’t work or doesn’t fit, the whole thing will crumble. So some people won’t understand the difference between a transvestite and transsexual. They will not understand that no matter how hard you force them to because it will mean deconstructing their whole belief system. If they understand Adam and Eve is a parable or fairytale, they then have to rethink their entire belief system.

As to me being seen as whatever, I was more likely commenting on the phenomenon of our culture. I am creative, and I am all of those things you mention, and doing one thing out there and people seeing it, it doesn’t matter if people know all that about me or not.

DS: Recently I interviewed Natasha Khan of the band Bat for Lashes, and she is considered by many to be one of the real up-and-coming artists in music today. Her band was up for the Mercury Prize in England. When I asked her where she drew inspiration from, she mentioned what really got her recently was the 1960’s and 70’s psychedelic drag queen performance art, such as seen in Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What do you think when you hear an artist in her twenties looking to that era of drag performance art for inspiration?

RP: The first thing I think of when I hear that is that young kids are always looking for the ‘rock and roll’ answer to give. It’s very clever to give that answer. She’s asked that a lot: “Where do you get your inspiration?” And what she gave you is the best sound bite she could; it’s a really a good sound bite. I don’t know about Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, but I know about The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What I think about when I hear that is there are all these art school kids and when they get an understanding of how the press works, and how your sound bite will affect the interview, they go for the best.

DS: You think her answer was contrived?

RP: I think all answers are really contrived. Everything is contrived; the whole world is an illusion. Coming up and seeing kids dressed in Goth or hip hop clothes, when you go beneath all that, you have to ask: what is that really? You understand they are affected, pretentious. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s how we see things. I love Paris Is Burning.

DS: Has the Iraq War affected you at all?

RP: Absolutely. It’s not good, I don’t like it, and it makes me want to enjoy this moment a lot more and be very appreciative. Like when I’m on a hike in a canyon and it smells good and there aren’t bombs dropping.

DS: Do you think there is a lot of apathy in the culture?

RP: There’s apathy, and there’s a lot of anti-depressants and that probably lends a big contribution to the apathy. We have iPods and GPS systems and all these things to distract us.

DS: Do you ever work the current political culture into your art?

RP: No, I don’t. Every time I bat my eyelashes it’s a political statement. The drag I come from has always been a critique of our society, so the act is defiant in and of itself in a patriarchal society such as ours. It’s an act of treason.

DS: What do you think of young performance artists working in drag today?

RP: I don’t know of any. I don’t know of any. Because the gay culture is obsessed with everything straight and femininity has been under attack for so many years, there aren’t any up and coming drag artists. Gay culture isn’t paying attention to it, and straight people don’t either. There aren’t any drag clubs to go to in New York. I see more drag clubs in Los Angeles than in New York, which is so odd because L.A. has never been about club culture.

DS: Michael Musto told me something that was opposite of what you said. He said he felt that the younger gays, the ones who are up-and-coming, are over the body fascism and more willing to embrace their feminine sides.

RP: I think they are redefining what femininity is, but I still think there is a lot of negativity associated with true femininity. Do boys wear eyeliner and dress in skinny jeans now? Yes, they do. But it’s still a heavily patriarchal culture and you never see two men in Star magazine, or the Queer Eye guys at a premiere, the way you see Ellen and her girlfriend—where they are all, ‘Oh, look how cute’—without a negative connotation to it. There is a definite prejudice towards men who use femininity as part of their palette; their emotional palette, their physical palette. Is that changing? It’s changing in ways that don’t advance the cause of femininity. I’m not talking frilly-laced pink things or Hello Kitty stuff. I’m talking about goddess energy, intuition and feelings. That is still under attack, and it has gotten worse. That’s why you wouldn’t get someone covering the RuPaul album, or why they say people aren’t tuning into the Katie Couric show. Sure, they can say ‘Oh, RuPaul’s album sucks’ and ‘Katie Couric is awful’; but that’s not really true. It’s about what our culture finds important, and what’s important are things that support patriarchal power. The only feminine thing supported in this struggle is Pamela Anderson and Jessica Simpson, things that support our patriarchal culture.

Monday, November 26, 2007

In the 18 months since Andrea Muizelaar was crowned winner of the reality TV series Canada’s Next Top Model, her life has been a complete whirlwind. From working in a dollar store in her hometown of Whitby, Ontario, to modeling haute couture in Toronto, she had reached her dream of becoming a true Top Model.

But at what cost? Unknown to casual television viewers, Muizelaar had been enveloped in the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, which inevitably became too much for her to bear. She gave up modeling and moved back to Whitby, where she sought treatment for her disorder, re-entered college, and now works at a bank. Where is she now? Happy and healthy, she says.

Recently Andrea Muizelaar sat down with Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman in a candid interview that stretched to nearly two hours, as she told all about her hopes and aspirations, her battle with anorexia, and just what really happened on Canada’s Next Top Model.